A Long Long Time Ago
by 4plato
Summary: Alternative ending with Chase as narrator. Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.


It was like nothing he had ever experienced before in his life. He was House, he was the one they expected to rise above it all. He was the one who was supposed to turn to stone, stand back and make decisions and accept the consequences. Now, all he could do was stand there staring at Chase. And he was shaking. Shaking and sweating so hard it made him feel cold. Maybe that was why he was shaking. Maybe it was just the cold and it would be alright as soon as he warmed up. No,  
that was stupid, his shaking had nothing to do with the temperature in the observation room. God, he wanted to scream, this is worse than not thinking at all, just having random, meaningless echoes of thoughts.

Chase had stopped and was looking at him. His eyes staring at him from over the surgical mask.

"I need you to nod" his voice was soft and the Austrailan accent stronger than House had ever heard it. "House, don't think, Don't try to think, just nod. You're the proxy. House! I need you to nod. Now."

How long ago had he heard those words? A second? twenty seconds? A minute? twenty minutes? No, not twenty minutes, Chase would not have been able to wait a full twenty minutes, not with a patient in that condition. There that was better, That was a logical thought. He had considered the situation, the circumstances,  
the people involved and he had known it couldn't have been twenty minutes.

"He nodded, we're moving" That wasn't an Australian accent. House's head swung to the left. It was Foreman, That was bad, the Dean of Medicine in the observation room.

"I didn't see him nod" a woman's voice. Not one he recognized, must have been one of the nurses.

"I did" Foreman sounded angry but he didn't look angry. Not that recongizing emotions was one of House's strenghts. Maybe he got it wrong. Maybe he was angry.

Foreman moved over to House. He put his hand on House's arm, holding on. That's what people do to comfort one another, but it didn't feel comforting, maybe because it wasn't meant to comfort. Maybe Foreman wasn't holding his arm to make him feel less alone or less scared. Maybe he was holding his arm to make sure he didn't move,  
didn't freak out and do something stupid, something dangerous. Maybe he should do something stupid and dangerous. Or not.

Actually, it was going better than Foreman had been afraid it would. His first fear was that House would go rouge. Insist on strange, seemingly useless tests, and then lead them on some long and winding road to a diagnosis nobody had considered. Just like he had done so many times before, except then it had all been based on logic and knowledge and sometimes instinct. Now it would've been based on fear and denial and some kind of desperation. This was Wilson.

...  
Thirty years later

"And he never saw another patient, right?" The reporter was older than Chase had expected him to be. "Must not be very good,"  
he thought. "to be this old and still doing on site interviews"

"No, not in person. I mean he did consultations, and on occasion he would check out a video or a photo, but no, he was never again actually in a room with a patient. Well, unless of course you consider Wilson a permanent patient."

"And Dr. Wilson never even did consultations, right? I mean I realize the wheelchair would have limited what he could do, but if House was still active without leaving their place surely Wilson could have been as well" the reporter never looked up. And that bothered Chase as well, You'd think body language, facial expressions would be important to an interview. But, then again, he had just told the guy an internationally recognized medical genius never actually looked at a patient, so...

"Wilson did all the archiving and most of the writing. House always needed someone to work off of. I'm sure there was never one decision he didn't discuss with him. Wilson was one of the few people who could always follow House, his logic,  
his process"

"Still, it must have been quite a change. I mean, I know Dr House's reputation for not seeing patients, but many of his earlier case histories talk about his observations of patients, families, even pets if I remember right." Chase realized he could not have picked this guy out of a police line up, he still had not really seen his face.

"Yes, but somehow it fit him. Maybe even better than the life he had before the accident." Chase smiled, got up and walked over to the coffee maker. "Like the work he did on their place. As long as I had known the man, I had no idea what a carpenter he was. He took the first year they were together and just redid everything. Widened halls and doorways. Have you see the kitchen?" Unbelieveable, the guy didn't even look up when shaking his head. "I'll take you over there later if you want. Anyway, he re-did the kitchen so that the sink, the cupboards, the table everything was low enough for Wilson to reach it from his chair. He always said House did it because he hated washing dishes."

Now the reporter took a deep breathe and made a show of closing his notebook. "Here it comes,"  
Chase thought and he wasn't disappointed. "There were rumors, that they were partners so to speak"

"I hope they were" Chase came back to the conference table. "Thirty years they lived together. I hope they were happy, in every sense of the word" He waited. There would be a follow up question. But there wasn't, just the professional silence of a person who knows when to wait.

"I saw them sleeping together twice." Chase could hear his own voice and it sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away. And he listened to it, edited it. He wanted to make this clear, all of a sudden it seemed important to get this right. "The night Wilson came out of the sedation and House told him about the" hesitation searching for the right word, "extent of the damage. It was hard. That night I went back to see if House wanted a break, I knew he'd never leave, but I thought he might trust me enough to get some sleep, take a shower or something. But when I walked in, they were in bed together. Not holding each other or anything, Just two bodies in one bed.  
So I sat outside by the door and made sure they weren't disturbed, that no rumors were started"

Chase sipped at his coffee, the next one might be harder to describe.

"The second time?" the reported asked, looking up for the first time, which angered Chase a bit Talking about a genius and his work hadn't interested him enough to make him look up, but just the hint of a sex scandal had him practically standing at attention.

"Just a couple of years ago. There was a really bad snow storm, a lot of places had lost power I was worried about them, at their age and everything, so as soon as I could I went over to make sure they were alright. I had a key to the house so I just let myself in. Somehow they'd managed to pull the couch over in front of the fireplace and they were sleeping together under a huge bedspread. I remember Wilson was the one snoring and that seemed funny to me. I didn't wake them up, just checked the kitchen to make sure they had plenty of food then I left. Whatever happened or didn't happen between them, they looked happy that night, especially House. He looked happy"


End file.
